


Sink Shower & Stuff

by eitHer9335



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Basically Sara Lance moping because she's not a superhero anymore, But more interesting than just that, Filling in what the show didn't, Gen, I'm going to pretend I know things about Arrow, Small-scale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 13,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27827473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eitHer9335/pseuds/eitHer9335
Summary: At the beginning of Season 3, when the Time Bureau kicks the Legends off the Waverider, Sara goes back to Star City and gets a job at Sink Shower & Stuff in the time before the Legends' triumphant return. How would a hero handle a break that wasn't meant to be temporary, and building a "normal" life?A series of loosely connected one-shots. Prewritten, posted one per week.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	1. I - Arrival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm making myself feel better about missing Legends by publishing this - it's been three-fourths done and waiting on my computer for too long. Please know that I did not watch Arrow up to to this point, I just googled the broad strokes of what would have been happening while this was happening on Legends.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

Sara sits down with her feet dangling over the edge of the building. Even from so high, the view is limited by Star City’s perpetual smog. Strings of light stretch a few blocks into the distance, but not much farther; the night air is scented with exhaust. She kicks her heels against the brick wall and remembers that this is the nice part of town.

She waits for not quite fifteen minutes, eyes scanning the street below, before her phone goes off, vibrating angrily in her pocket. She pulls it out, notices the name with some surprise, and answers it.

“Why am I not surprised you keep tabs on Oliver’s roof,” she greets.

“Well, what can I say,” Felicity says, her grin practically audible. “You should be glad I do, though. He’s not going to be back for a couple more hours, so I just saved you from a very long wait.”

“Arrow stuff?” Sara asks. She considers standing up and climbing down, then decides it’s a waste of time. Instead she picks up her bag, readies herself, and pushes off the edge. The fire escape rattles only slightly under her feet as she lands.

Felicity’s voice, talking in characteristic circles, provides a soothing background to her maneuvering. “Arrow stuff would be a good guess, and any other night, pretty much every other night, you’d be right. Cause you’re smart like that, or I mean you know him pretty well, so. But tonight’s different, though, he’s got a city council meeting and he can’t get out of it, plus anyway he told me he’s trying to take his job as mayor seriously, now. Which he really should because, duh, the mayor.”

Sara hums in placid agreement, investigating the window. “Any booby traps I should be aware of before I let myself in?” she asks, already halfway to dismantling the first.

“Oh!” Felicity gasps. “No!”

Sara raises her eyebrows, even though there’s no one to see it. “No booby traps?”

“No, yes booby traps, but no don’t let yourself in,” Felicity says, rushed and anxious. Sara patiently pauses in her work at the window.

“No, don’t let myself in, for a reason other than booby traps,” she summarizes.

“Yes, not for the booby traps.” On the other end of the phone, Sara hears Felicity moving around, the jangle of keys. “Uh, I don’t know if you know this, but Oliver’s son is in there right now?”

Sara sits back on her heels, nonplussed. “No, don’t let myself in,” she agrees. She raises a hand to block the reflection and check the other side of the window, in case she had somehow missed a kid staring back out at her.

Felicity charges onward. “It’s probably not a great idea for William to find a random assassin lady sitting in his living room. But just wait a few minutes, I’m on my way to come get you. You can stay with me.”

Sara swings the bag over one shoulder and braces the phone against the other before she slides down the ladder to the next level of the fire escape, taking the chance to carefully chew her words. The thought occurs to her to decline and spend the night in the clock tower; it occurs to her to give Felicity a hard time for being so eager to have her over. Instead, she produces a nonchalant, “Thanks,” and slides down another level.

“No problem,” Felicity chirps. “I’ll be there soon.”

Sara returns the phone to her pocket and continues to descend. It’s a newer building, the fire escape is quiet and sturdy, and its quick progress. She settles in to wait on the first landing above the ground, pulling her hood up now that she’s within potential eyesight of people, not just pigeons. The street is deserted, and she’s not here as a vigilante anyway, but leaving her bright hair exposed makes her nervous regardless.

It’s not much longer until a small red car turns onto the street and parks in front of the building. Sara’s phone starts to vibrate again, but rather than answer it she leaps down, walks over, and taps on the car window. Somehow Felicity’s startled gasp is audible even from outside the car, but when she unlocks it and Sara slides in she’s wearing a bright smile.

“Good to see you,” she sighs. She takes in Sara’s bag, very obviously decides not to say anything, and instead offers, “Hug?”

“For you? Always,” Sara teases. She reaches an arm across the car, Felicity leans in and gets jabbed by the gearshift, and they end up doing a strange sideways embrace with arms on each other’s shoulders.

“So what brings you back to 2018?” Felicity asks, once they’re on their way. “You get vacation days on the Waverider?”

“Vacation,” Sara snorts. Her experience of time travel is marked by the constant feeling that there’s never enough time. Now she has an unknown quantity of free time on her hands, and it does not at all feel freeing. “No, definitely not vacation. We, uh, got replaced.”

“What? Sara Lance, get replaced?” Felicity jokes. She glances over, and Sara makes her point with flicker of her eyes down to her bag and out the widow. “Oh, uh. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” She waves the apology away then resettles her hands awkwardly on her lap. “It surprised me too, but maybe it shouldn’t have. Our team is hilariously underqualified to be protecting the entire timeline.”

“Sorry,” Felicity grimaces. She stops at a light and stares awkwardly out into the intersection rather than at Sara. “So you’re, like, really moving back to Star City.”

“Looks like it.” Sara rubs her thumb against the strap of her bag. She presses down and sees the fabric fold unevenly into the empty space on the top of the bag; she sees the neat stacks of Gideon-fabricated clothes she had decided she didn’t need and had left behind on her bed on the Waverider. “Thanks for letting me stay with you, by the way,” she adds. “I promise I’ll find somewhere else before too long, I’m not moving in.”

“Oh, come on, you could totally move in.” Felicity parks in front of an apartment building, then turns to offer her a wide smile. “For you, always,” she echoes, then reconsiders. “Always my couch? I’m not sure if that works.”

Sara gets out of the car. From across the top of it, she calls, “The couch, really? I’m hurt, Felicity.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment, make me smile for an hour. If you want.


	2. II - Oliver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara contemplates joining Team Arrow again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Passing knowledge of Arrow might be helpful, but only a little. So would knowledge of the Season 1 episode "Left Behind".

With a thump, Oliver lands on his back. Sara grins down at him and levels the wooden training baton at his throat.

He sighs a little and lies back. “In my defense, batons are more your weapon than mine.”

“True.” She switches one of the batons to her other hand and reaches down to help him up. “Though I don’t –“

He grabs her wrist and pulls; his leg sweeps hers out from under her. She crashes to the ground, and this time it’s Oliver grinning down at her.

“Okay, I get it,” she wheezes. He offers his hand, and after a moment of raising her eyebrows she takes it. Once on her feet, she tosses down her batons and goes to sit on top of a table.

Oliver leans next to her. He picks up his shirt, shakes it out and considers it. “I guess time traveling hasn’t put you out of practice,” he says.

“What, did you think it had?” Sara pulls one leg in and stretches down the other, the edge of her heel barely on the table. “I’ve dueled Malcolm Merlyn more times over the last year than I care to count, and don’t get me started on pre-magic Damien Darhk. I’ve kept in shape.”

Oliver hums assent, and apparently decides that his shirt is clean enough to be worn again. “So you want to come out with us tonight then?” he says, a little muffled as he pulls it over his head.

“Yeah? Got a new bank robber to take down?” Sara switches legs, now facing the row of dummies in their uniforms. It occurs to her how poorly her team would do against Star City’s well-dressed, back-stabbing sort of crime.

“Lawyers, actually,” Oliver says. “Represent people who are trying to collect life insurance. After murdering the ones whose insurance someone wanted to collect, of course.”

Sara laughs under her breath. “That’s a new one.”

“Oh yeah,” Oliver sighs. “The crazy’s in this city now too. There’s no escaping.” He pushes off the table, walks over to where Sara had hung her jacket, and brings it over to her. “You’ll do it, then?”

Sara takes the jacket, swings it over her shoulders, and tries to shove the idea into her mind’s eye. The warehouses and smog of her hometown, fighting corruption as the unofficial left hand of a police force led by her father, wearing a mask and returning to vigilantism.

She glances over her shoulder at the browns and greens and blacks of the uniforms, and it’s an easy doubt, so she says, “What would I wear?” Oliver’s eyebrows are gently confused, and she explains, “Since I left, I’ve been the White Canary, remember? No mask. A hero in the light. Except your team is more about hiding in the shadows, I think.”

Oliver shrugs. “Wear a black hoodie, then. It won’t be a problem to get you a dark suit, might just take a few days.”

“Yeah,” Sara agrees, because it makes sense, but somehow it doesn’t answer her question. Oliver’s gathering up her batons, and he sends her a look, and she makes an effort to smile back. “Yeah, cool, I’ll be there tonight then. Unless something else comes up, but,” she rolls her eyes, “It won’t. I’m not exactly doing anything right now.”

Oliver is quiet as he walks to the rack on the other side of the mat and slides the training weapons in. Then he turns to face her with a strange expression. “It’s okay if you don’t want to go,” he says.

“It’s not that I don’t want to go,” Sara insists. She hops down off the table, walks over to the bank of computers, idly sets one of the chairs to spinning. “I just… no, I don’t know.”

Oliver regards her patiently, arms crossed, waiting. It occurs to Sara that she’s gotten too used to being in charge.

“You really want to do this, huh?” she challenges him. “You really want to do the wishy-washy feelings thing?”

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “I can try. I’ll warn you that I’m not very good at it, though.”

Sara snorts. “Oh, my team’s a bunch of wimps. I’ve had to get very good at it.”

She stops the chair, slumps into it, and pushes off to send it spinning again. Each time she goes around, her eyes focus in on Oliver, his steady eyes and one hand still on the baton. It’s not that she’s skeptical of his sincerity so much as cautious about what else there is, and so each time he drifts past her she digs a little deeper into him.

She’s known him for long enough to make it an easy task. When she stops the chair, only to start it again in the opposite direction, he sure enough drops his hand from the baton and shifts to his other foot. Impatient, she realizes, and adjusts her mouth to keep from smiling. There was a time when he was an incorrigible gossip, and she had delighted in bringing every scrap she could find back to him, eager for his attention and approval. He’s tempered, now, but the studied steadiness of his interest hides an impatient curiosity.

There’s no disappointment in his gaze, no pity or expectation. She stops the chair again, leans her head back to watch the ceiling slowly wobble above her, and begins with the only thing she’s certain of. “I’ve never planned for the future before.”

At the edge of her vision he settles into a dignified cross-legged pose, leaning back against the rack of weapons, and she sighs and feels herself relax into the chair.

“Before the Queen’s Gambit, I was too busy having fun to really decide what I wanted from life. After, I was too busy surviving. Even when I left the League, came back here, I was running. I didn’t settle… I don’t think I ever unpacked.”

“But you unpacked while you were time traveling?” he guesses.

She purses her lips. “Mostly?” She’s no longer dizzy enough for staring at the ceiling to be interesting, so she grabs a pen from the desk behind her and clicks it. “I mean, I did settle in. I was comfortable there. But I wasn’t planning for the future. It was just… something goes wrong. We go and fix it. Just reactionary.”

“So it’s new for you, to have to figure out what comes next.”

“Yes.” She clicks the pen on her thigh, tries to spin it between her fingers, swears under her breath as it slips and skitters away from her. She glares at it for a while, then tilts her head at it when something else occurs to her. “No, actually. I did have to figure that out, once, but I made a bad choice.”

“Ditching college to party?” Oliver guesses.

She rolls the chair over and picks up the pen. “Uh, no,” she snorts, and tosses it at him with a sarcastic glare.

He catches it, of course.

“No, not college.” She picks up another pen from the desk – there are two more, she notes happily – and clicks it menacingly against her leg. Oliver rolls his eyes, and she catches herself before she sticks her tongue out. “Last year, there were… well, time travel difficulties. I got stranded in the fifties for two years.” She takes great satisfaction in the alarmed way his eyebrows go up. “Yeah, don’t get me started on the Time Scatter to Salem. Anyway, I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I made the bright decision to rejoin the League of Assassins.”

Oliver vacillates between confused and concerned. “In the fifties,” he finally says.

“Yeah,” Sara sighs. “And there’s Time Drift and various excuses I could make, but I was the one who decided to do that. And all because I was bored.”

Oliver mouths ‘time drift,’ rubs his forehead, and abandons his neat meditative pose in favor of kicking his legs out and slouching back. “It sounds like you’re being too hard on yourself,” is his conclusion.

Sara makes a face and unscrews the top of the pen. She pulls her legs up and begins to take it apart and put the pieces in her lap. “Maybe. But it still says something about me.” There are disappointingly few components, and after a second she starts to put it back together. “When I’m lost, I relive the past rather than dealing with the future.”

“Are you lost now?”

Sara looks over at him in mock scorn. “That was implied.” She draws back as if to throw the pen, and his hands come up reflexively, but she grins and she begins to take it apart again. “But I think it’s about time I get my shit together and deal with the future.”

“And coming back to Team Arrow would be going back to the past.” Oliver smiles ruefully. “I’ll miss you, punk, but it sounds like you’re doing what’s right for you.”

She gasps in mock offense. “Punk?”

“Oh yeah,” he laughs, and throws the pen back at her.

She catches it, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment, make my day. If you want.


	3. III - Interview

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara does the normal-person-thing and tries to get a job.

“Please, sit down,” the woman invites. It’s a security company she works for, and she looks fit and imposing, but the hand she shakes Sara’s with is a manager’s hand, a lawyer-type.

Sara sits in the indicated chair, waits patiently as the woman gets around the desk and settles into her own chair. It seems to take her forever to open the file Sara had sent in, to get out a pen and a notepad, and in that eternity Sara wonders how a job interview still could make her nervous, after every genuinely dangerous thing she has faced down without an issue.

“I must say,” the woman finally begins, “I don’t usually look forward to interviews as being interesting. Your resume has proved me wrong.”

Sara laughs along, realizes her interviewer isn’t laughing as well, and belatedly trails off. “Yeah,” she says instead, “Yeah, I’m…”

“A superhero,” the manager finishes. The 'apparently' is implied. “You submitted a photo of you, along with some other notable figures – the Flash, the Arrow – at a ceremony, being thanked by the President for saving Earth from… an alien invasion.” She pulls the picture in question out of the folder. “You’re the one in white.”

“Yes,” Sara says again.

The woman leaves the picture between them and leans back in her chair. Her eyes never leave Sara’s. “Despite your illustrious company, though, you’re not quite as well known, are you?” Again she rifles through the folder, murmuring, “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your nickname… Canary? Yes, Black Canary, which does confuse me given the white costume. But certainly an interesting resume item, ‘Vigilante, Starling City, 2013-15.’ Do you believe that’s a positive qualification you have?”

“Yes,” Sara begins. Then she pauses. “What?”

“My apologies.” The manager tips her head to the side, considering. “Do you believe being a vigilante is a good thing?”

“I helped people,” she offers.

“You killed people.”

Sara gives up trying to make eye contact with her. “I don’t anymore,” she says.

“Never?”

That one gives her pause. All the nameless historical thugs only got head trauma, she didn’t kill any of them, she doesn’t have to. And she’d replaced Darhk in the timeline, hadn’t she? Thawne had died, but it wasn’t them who did it. But if it was part of the mission, would she really refuse to kill someone? Or at least re-kill them? Or let them be re-killed?

The pause has lasted too long. When she risks a glance, the woman has her mouth set in a satisfied line, pen poised over her paper. Sara settles for something she thinks is close to the truth. “Barring extraordinary circumstances.”

The line of her mouth solidifies and the pen scratches.

Some competitive spirit inside Sara flares, and she adds, “All of it is a little extraordinary. In my defense.”

Now the line looks vaguely scornful. But it is a calm, managerial voice that continues. “Speaking of. Your resume claims you have spent the last two years doing ‘classified superherosim.’ Can you see why not knowing what you’ve done in that time might be problematic for our company?”

Unwisely, Sara chooses honesty again. “Not really.”

The woman sits forward in her chair, and it makes an unappealing creak. “Miss Lance,” she begins, and Sara notices absently that the woman has a tattoo, almost but not quite concealed by her sleeve. “You seem very qualified, but maybe not for what our company does.”

“You contract security guards,” Sara says. “I think I would be good at that.” When Felicity had originally thrown this out as a career idea, Sara had laughed at the thought of how ridiculously overqualified she would be. Now that she’s actually trying to get the job, she’s not quite certain as to how that managed to backfire on her.

The woman steeples her fingers. “While our employees are of course required to be capable, they are asked to use those skills only in the rarest of circumstances. Even if they are, they must stay within the mandates of our contract, and within the limits of the law. If an incident were to occur, the company would be legally liable… the point being, of course, that we are very eager to avoid incidents altogether.”

Between the lawyer-speak, it comes together. “You’re saying you don’t want a loose cannon.” The woman’s hands come up in a placating gesture, but before Sara can be smothered in more cautiously ambiguous mumbo-jumbo, she continues. “And, you’re saying this would be practically a desk job anyway.”

The corner of the interviewer’s mouth pulls sideways, almost ruefully. “Would you like to continue with the rest of the interview?” she says.

Sara wonders, for a moment, if it might be smart to play it out, to see if she can talk this woman into trusting her. It doesn’t seem likely, but she does really need the money and it can’t hurt to try… Except, she reflects, it can. She's not excited about watching a door all day, and the interviewer might have a point. Her company doesn’t want Sara killing anyone, and Sara doesn’t want Sara killing anyone either.

So she stands. “I think I’ll pass,” she says, and the woman collects the papers she had submitted and hands them back. At least their handshake on the way out feels respectful rather than bitter.

She should probably shred the file, too, but if she was willing to hand it to some mid-level security company, there’s no one she really needs to worry about keeping it from. She ignores the ‘trash only’ sign and tosses it in the bin as she walks out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weirdly enough, this is what I wrote first for this story. And it's not a terribly accurate interview, but oh well. Leave a comment, warm my heart. If you want.


	4. IV - Ray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara sees one of her teammates! He's not doing so great either.

For some absurd reason, Ray refuses help with his bags, so Sara leans against his car and watches as he loads them into the trunk. There are only three, which seems a little strange to her. He hasn’t sent anything ahead, and he’s really moving out to California, it’s not as if he’s just going on vacation.

But for all she knows it might be normal. Per habit, she herself has a bag ready beside her bed, in case she has to flee her apartment. By comparison, Ray’s bags are beyond excessive, but she’s pretty sure she’s not normal in that regard.

Sara had also offered to drive them out to the airport, and again Ray had insisted he do it. “Only fair, since you’ll be driving back,” he’d chirped. So when he carefully shuts the trunk, she slides into the passenger’s seat. A moment later, he settles next to her, meticulously checking the mirrors and adjusting the seat. He even offers his phone to her, to choose music. She turns it down with a grin.

“You pick. Only fair, I’ll pick on the way back,” and Ray laughs at hearing his own words back. Of course, halfway through the third Joni Mitchell song Sara starts to wish she’d taken him up on his offer, but it’s too late now.

Once they get into downtown, the traffic backs up, and they make progress in inches. Ray keeps anxiously checking the time, somehow worried despite having at least two more hours than necessary, and Sara takes pity on him and chooses the most inane question first. “So, why Upswipz?”

Ray sits up a little straighter. “Well, their model for employee efficiency is actually quite revolutionary,” he recites. “And they’re unique among fast-growing companies in that they are staying true to their foundational goals.”

“And they’re changing the world,” she jokes.

“Well, not really,” Ray laughs along. “They’re a dating app.”

The song ends on a ringing a capella interval and in the pause between songs Sara considers that. Once the next song begins, she carefully wades in. “Why are you going to work for a dating app?” Again, she regrets letting Ray pick the music. The calm guitar gives her nothing to hide in.

Ray’s answer comes smoothly, with excitement genuine enough to fool only himself. “Well, I’m eager for a new experience. I’ve done a lot of work in nanotechnology and it’ll be fun to dip my toes into a new field, so to speak.” He grins, pleased with the metaphor. Sara nods along, entirely dissatisfied.

“Did you apply anywhere else?”

Ray’s head-bobbing slows slightly and falls behind the beat. “A couple places,” he says, making a cautious lane change. “But in the end I think it’s best that I ended up at Upswipz.”

Sara gazes out the window at the scene of smog and billboards. Ray’s fingers drum on the wheel as the silence stretches longer, and Sara suppresses a triumphant smile as his unending desire to talk drives their uneven tempo against the wheel faster.

“I mean, I know we’re done time travelling,” he suddenly adds. “But I can’t help but think we’re really not.” Sara glances over, but his eyes are fixed on the road and he doesn’t notice. “I mean, maybe this is just me, but it feels like sooner or later, something’s going to happen, and it’ll be like we never left. You know?” Finally, he does glance over, and Sara faces down his expression. It’s probably meant to be questioning, but she can only see it as forlorn. “I keep thinking, if I have to leave, at least it’s just a dating app I’m leaving behind.”

She overcomes the temptation to passionately agree, and instead gives a lopsided shrug, a pained grimace, and a “Sort of”. It’s enough to buy her some time, his eyes flick back to the road, and she works mightily to marshal her thoughts into something coherent.

Of course, she’s been living in her apartment for several weeks now and still hasn’t set out the few photos she brought with her from the Waverider. Even just being in a car with Ray, watching the unnecessary focus he pays to readjusting his rearview mirror, has a dangerous nostalgic edge. It makes her think of being called “Captain,” of facing down an enemy with her team arrayed about her, of having a just and reliable goal to make the ground solid under her feet. The hope Ray has, a gut feeling that this is passing and transitory, is in her stomach too. And with this external confirmation, she feels her own instinct solidify. This isn’t the rest of her life.

It feels substantial, and the impulse is to grin back at him with the old Legends charm. But reality reasserts itself with the reminder that this really is a crack in the post-Waverider life whose foundations she’s been working so hard to build. And she wouldn’t wish that same setback on Ray.

So even as her own suspicion transforms into certainty, she flexes her captain muscles for the first time in a while, acts in Ray’s best interest, and lies.

“Well, I’m sure once you’ve established yourself, someone more interesting than Upswipz will hire you,” she says, fixing her tone at reassuring and blinding herself to the disappointment in Ray’s eyes. When they get to the airport, she goes out of her way to hug him tightly. “Please, come visit,” she says, and feels the way Ray’s embrace gets tighter as it dawns on him. And as she’s driving the car back from the airport, her phone buzzes with a text.

_Hi Sara, would you do me a favor? I left a box of stuff with Felicity, didn’t think I’d need it. Would you send it to my new address? Thank you so much!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. Ray is me. I love Joni Mitchell. ANYWAY, leave a comment, save the end of my year, if you want.


	5. V - Sink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally we get to Sink Shower & Stuff.

Sara learns from the interview at the security company. Her next resume is sparse: the job she had during high school, her bartending gigs. She considers going to Thea for her letter of rec, but instead gets ahold of her shift manager from Verdant. When the letter comes, she opens it, is satisfied to find nothing more than mild compliments about her dedication, and reseals it the way the League taught her. In the interview, they ask about the gaps in time in her resume, and she assures them she was traveling, points out that as a result she can speak several languages and could help customers who don’t speak English. She gets the job.

In an icky sort of way, it’s perfect. It gives her a steady source of income, and with it she moves into a crappy little apartment, no longer imposing on Felicity. It eats up her free time, hours whose previous emptiness was an indictment of her uselessness. It makes her normal.

Of course, it helps that she hates it. It’s the most boring job she could have possibly imagined; every day she counts the minutes until she can leave. That feels perfect too. When she gets a chance to go back to the Waverider, she won’t be leaving behind anything important.

“This is important.”

Her manager is glaring at her. Interrupted from her thoughts, Sara mimes attentiveness and smiles back. “I hope you’re paying attention, Freckles,” he continues. “Here at Sink Shower & Stuff, we take customer service very seriously. If you want to keep your job, you can’t make the same mistake you made yesterday again.”

“Of course,” she replies, and rolls her eyes at his back when he walks away. The job would merely be horrible, but her manager is the most uptight, patronizing person Sara has ever met. She’s taken to tuning out his rants about her poor performance by imagining cutting his tongue out.

She returns to her stack of towels, glaring at their gross beige color and folding one, then the next, then the next, hating how she does it a little better each time. When she feels her phone buzz, she sighs in relief. A quick glance over her shoulder confirms that Carl can’t see her, and she pulls it out, notices it’s the groupchat with the ex-Legends, and opens the message curiously.

It’s a selfie of Nate, grinning widely, next to a statue. The accompanying text explains, Wound up in DC. Look who I found! and she connects the dots. It’s Rory’s statue, the one that had appeared after he had made friends with Washington.

Even as she watches, Ray texts back: Our illustrious forefather, and Jax contributes a string of laughing emojis. Rory will probably reply at 3 am the next morning – he’s unexpectedly eloquent over text, and it never ceases to amaze her.

She opens her keyboard. The easy banter of her team is dear to her, and she wants to join in, her fingers type out I thought then replace it with Only Rory and then delete that too and hover uncertainly. The chilly bite of the snow on a 18th century Christmas Eve washes up from her memory, and then the look on Jax’s face as he had lowered the gun, turned his back on Rip, and come to hug her.

It feels like she’s swallowed something that’s stuck uneasily in her chest, and she breathes shallowly past it and gazes through her phone screen. To her alarm, her eyes well up, and she blinks angrily. What’s wrong with her, that she’s sentimental for being shot?

“That had better not be your phone.”

Carl’s footsteps approach from behind and Sara shuts it off immediately but doesn’t put it away. “So what if it is,” she says, and she doesn’t know why. She wants to keep this job.

“Well, if it is, you are on your phone rather than working, and that’s a problem,” he retorts. He walks around to the other side of the table to face her, and she angrily stares him down. The imaginary dagger is in her hand again, but instead of being an amusing distraction, all the ways her stupid manager doesn’t actually have any power over her, it’s a reminder of when her job was wielding a knife, and not folding towels. But his accusatory smirk falters. “You okay, Freckles?” he asks.

Anger splashes up inside of her, she feels her fists clench and her shoulders tense. “I would be if you weren’t such an ass,” she snaps.

His eyebrows go up and he folds his arms. She glares back at him for a moment, hurling her imaginary knife and seeing it stick into the display behind him. She tries again and it whirs off to the other side, leaving him unscathed.

Her imagination won’t conjure any better luck for a third attempt, she knows, so she drops her eyes to the towels and shoves her phone back into her pocket. It’s surprisingly easy to mumble, “Sorry.”

He clears his throat self-righteously. “You should be.” She glances back up, but he doesn’t look as self-satisfied as he should. “In the future, be more respectful. For now, a shipment of new sinks just arrived. Tell Adan to come finish this, you go bring them in.”

Usually that’s not her job. The sinks are heavy, and habitual sexism means it always gets assigned to whatever man is on-duty at the time. But she’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Being outside, free from the oppressive still air of the store, working with her body, is a much more appealing prospect than being trapped here with her endless pile of towels. “Got it,” she says, and at her belligerent tone Carl looks almost relieved.

“Don’t think I’ll be so forgiving next time,” he calls as she heads off, and she makes sure he sees her flip him off.


	6. VI - Note

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if anyone is actually reading this, but if you are, I hope you enjoy.

Sara keeps an orange post-it note on the cabinet over the stove. It has three columns, and there’s not enough room for them to be very wide, so she can only fit five tallies on a line. But she figures she’ll just add another note beneath it when she runs out of space, as eventually she must.

The first column is times that Carl has fired her. Not just threatened to fire her, because that column would need another four sticky notes, but full out told her that she was fired. She just avoids him for the rest of the day – in the interest of not actually losing her job – then shows up the next day. He glowers just like the day before and usually takes a bit to build up enough steam to fire her again.

The second column was born when she agreed to start taking shifts as a bartender at Verdant. She doesn’t spend too much time there, avoiding the subtle sentimental pull that comes with all things Oliver Queen, but a couple nights a week she mixes drinks, gleefully wades in to break up fights, and keeps a sharp eye on her customers at the bar. Every so often, she’ll see something that catches her eye, a bruise or a scar or a flinch, and she’ll pull someone aside or corner them on their way to the bathroom or slip them a note with their drink. If it ends in a call to a hotline – and it often does – she’ll add another tally to the column. It’s a somber recordkeeping, but it gives her a deeper satisfaction than riling up her manager. This column is the reason she risks spending time at Verdant, this quiet sort of heroism that makes her feel better about having given up vigilantism.

The third column is people she’s laid. Surprisingly often she’ll forget to update this one, sometimes adding two or three at a time when she gets around to it.

All three inch down the page, staying more or less equal, and something about their balance gives Sara a sort of contentment. She still has no idea what she’s doing, blindly groping her way towards a tolerable life, but the post-it feels like a start.

Between bartending, her job at Sink Shower & Stuff, and a self-imposed training regimen, she manages to take up an impressive amount of her time. The occasional free evening or afternoon is usually snatched up by her friends or father; if not she makes a friend for the night, or else spends them wandering the city, on ground level or across rooftops, reacquainting herself with her hometown. It’s not hard to ensure she always goes to bed too exhausted to keep thinking, all that is fine. The problem is the moments that fall in the cracks of her busy-ness.

It always seems to take her a little too long in the bathroom at night, facing herself down in the mirror. Walking between her apartment and the grocery store always seems a little too dull to properly distract her. Or, like today, there always seem to be a few more minutes than she needs between her shifts at Sink, Shower & Stuff and Verdant.

So she sits on the floor of her tiny kitchen and laces and relaces and adjusts and relaces her boots. The timer on the stove glows above her, a sickly green that’s five minutes away from time to go. The orange of her post-it is much more pleasant to her, and she pointedly ignores the clock in favor of considering its crooked columns. There’s an idea she already has but hasn’t looked at yet, because it has to do with something Nate said to her once which she cannot for the life of her remember.

She pulls the laces tight and knots them neatly, narrowing her eyes and seeing the library, seeing Nate’s startled expression as she had walked in. She was up early to train, he was up late from researching, his hair was a chaotic mess and he didn’t smell great. She sees his excitement as it occurs to him to share what he’s thinking.

“You know what this whole time travel thing has made me think about, Captain?” he had said, and she had rolled her eyes and been completely content to sit on the arm of a chair and humor him. “A quote from a book –“ he doesn’t say which, though at the time he presumably had and this too she had forgotten – “a great book.”

Sara had smiled patiently. “Tell me, Nate, then go to bed.”

She pulls the memory closer to the surface and he responds, wearing his characteristic knowledge-bomb look. “’You are not you except in relation to other people.’ Isn’t that amazing?”

The green of the clock is still three minutes away, and Sara Lance who once was a superhero is living alone in a small apartment and working a boring minimum wage job. She is only she in relation to other people, and sometimes it looms over her that by choosing this for herself she’s all but erased herself from existence.

Now, though, she glances back up at the post-it, and the idea rolls pleasantly out in front of her. Even before remembering Nate’s quote, she’s been keeping track of the ways she is in relation to other people – she has a small orange post-it note to prove she exists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book in question is _All the King's Men _by Robert Penn Warren.__


	7. VII - Bureau

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3x01, Aruba-Con:
> 
> "I bumped into one of Rip's Time Agents a while back. He may have left his badge at my place."
> 
> "He... left it at your place?"
> 
> "Alright, maybe I lifted it off him in the morning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess heads-up that there is implied sex in this chapter? Very off-screen, if you're okay watching Legends this should be more than okay. But I have done my due diligence and you are aware.

Outside, there’s a chill and a biting breeze that makes Sara’s skin tingle with a strange anticipation. It makes her want to chase someone across rooftops, with her hair down like it is in her White Canary suit, or maybe to be chased herself. By comparison, the too-warm interior of the coffeeshop is stifling and uncomfortable.

But today is a day for respectability. Felicity had let Sara stay in her apartment for two weeks before she got a job, and if an Arrow-crisis means she doesn’t have time this morning to get coffee, then Sara owes it to her to get it for her. That, and they’re friends, and Sara’s not some ass who won’t spent a free morning helping a friend.

So she waits patiently for them to call her name, swinging her legs over the edge of a stool, idly scrutinizing the others in the shop. There’s a woman who’s less-than-subtly checking out the barista, a group of several teenagers gossiping much more loudly than they think they are, an elderly man reading a book that seems, based on the curly font and the young woman in a huge dress on the cover, to be marketed for teenage girls. “Will!” is called, and a man steps forward to take his coffee. He’s clearly on his way to work, carrying a small bag and wearing a cheap blue suit. Something about him catches her eye, the way he’s fiddling with something small in his pocket, the slightly worn spot on his lapel. “Sara!” is next, and as she slides off the stool and heads over to the counter, she remembers where she’s seen that style of suit before.

Instantly decided, she smiles to herself. She grabs the two cups, turns, makes an overexaggerated move to avoid colliding with one of the teenagers, and her elbow jostles ‘Will.’ His coffee tips, getting on her sleeve and dripping on his shoes, and she gasps. “I’m so sorry!” She brushes past him to get to the napkins, shoves them at him with an apologetic smile. “Did it get on you?”

“Hardly at all,” he reassures her. He leans to wipe off his shoes, lingers a little too long, then smiles and heads for the door, tossing the used napkin in the trash on the way out.

Sara smirks at his back and opens her hand. A small pin lies there, pilfered from his pocket, and she turns it over. Sure enough, it depicts a globe with an hourglass in the middle, the words “Federal Time Bureau” running along the edge. She grins and jogs out after him.

By the time she gets outside, he’s already halfway back. “Hi,” he says, surprised, and Sara mimics his uncertain stance, delighted to see she’s as good at this as she ever was. “I know this is really sudden, but can I have your number?”

She smiles back. “Only if I can have yours.”

-

Three days later, sometime past midnight, Sara extricates herself from Will. He sighs and shifts slightly, but doesn’t wake up, and she doesn’t even bother to put clothes on before she starts snooping through his apartment.

It doesn’t take her terribly long. In a locked drawer in his desk she finds a gun and some fun techy things: an advanced looking watch with complicated controls, a small white box with a dark screen, and a device with a grip, trigger, and short nozzle that vaguely resembles some Time Master device Rip once had. She decides against experimenting with them – with her luck it’ll create a temporal loop or some such catastrophe – and instead checks his closet. Three identical blue suits, each with a pin with that stupidly obvious logo, and, sure enough, in one of the pockets, a key card. It’s got an unflattering photo of him on one side, and on the back, a phone number, hours of operation and an address downtown conveniently labelled “Star City Field Office”. And Rip considers these guys professionals?

“Sara?” a sleepy voice calls, interrupting her scorn, and she quickly slides the closet door shut.

“Needed to use the bathroom,” she replies. “Be there in a second.” Within a minute she has replaced the devices, relocked the drawer, stashed the keycard in her boot by the door, and congratulated herself on her stealth. Then she heads back. “And here I was thinking I tired you out,” she calls, and is pleasantly reminded that this has been productive in more ways than one. They’ll probably even continue their streak of incompetence and replace his key card without any questions.

And, even though infiltrating a government office sounds like an amazing diversion, that’s not the point here. Sooner or later, the chance will come for her team to return to the Waverider. Now, when it does, she’ll be ready.


	8. VIII - Shower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara encounters a familiar face at Sink Shower & Stuff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It totally slipped my mind to post last week. Not that I think anyone cares, which, oh well.
> 
> That said I really hope you enjoy this chapter - it's an idea I've written out in a lot of different forms but I like this one the best. If you're confused as to what's going on, take a second to remind yourself what happened in 1x08 "Night of the Hawk" - you shouldn't need anything more than that.

Sara takes a vindictive pleasure in switching the order of the towels as she restocks them. They’re supposed to go gray, green, blue, white, beige, but she puts the beiges next to the greens and makes sure that there are several blues hidden behind the whites. Carl would freak out if he knew – in fact, he will freak out when he notices – and Sara will smile dumbly and watch his blood pressure rise. It’s a rebellion in a petulant sort of way that reminds her of her teenage years, when all the reason she needed to do anything was that someone had told her she shouldn’t. Everything Laurel had been smart enough not to do, Sara delighted in being smart enough to do anyway and get away with.

Some days, this comparison to teenage-Sara feels like a positive, like a fading of the scars from the mess since then. As she places the last towel in with the label facing away from the aisle, she imagines Carl’s frustration and is glad this is one of the positive comparison days, because the other kind, the days where any thoughts of the life she used to have just remind her how much she’s lost, are terrible.

An elderly woman comes around the corner. “Oh, hi,” she says, taking in the nametag. “Can you show me where the showerheads are?”

She has a pleasant enough retirement-vibe that Sara’s smile, while forced, is not fake. “No problem,” she says. The lady goes to collect her cart, and with it a fragile, squinting woman who makes her look robust by comparison – presumably her mother. The shower section is not far away, but as Sara leads them through the store, the two women inch along like snails, making the distance seem to stretch before her eyes. She takes short steps, so that her pace doesn’t look insultingly slow, and remembers to smile whenever she makes eye contact with the only one of her customers who can still see.

“I think we could’ve found the showerheads on our own,” the elder one grouches. Her voice is creaky and thin, and something about it gives Sara an aggravating tickle of deja vu. She throws her mind at the problem, can’t put her finger on why, and with nothing better to do buckles down to eavesdrop well enough to remember who this old lady reminds her of.

“We probably could have, but it’s fine that we didn’t,” the younger one soothes. She glances over at Sara – at her nametag – and adds, “Sara here seems happy to help us.”

The mother turns her pale eyes on her and smiles. “I love your name,” she creaks.

Sara smiles back, a little confused. “Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t mind her,” the daughter interrupts. She places a fond hand on her mother’s shoulder and explains, “There’s a story she loves to tell, and it has someone named Sara in it. She’s just excited because this looks like a chance for her to tell it again.”

“Not a story, Judy,” the woman gripes. Then she turns to Sara with eagerness. “See, when I was young, working in an asylum in my hometown, I met an angel.” She pauses for dramatic effect, in the background her daughter looks patiently despairing, and Sara narrows her eyes with a thought. “There were these bird creatures there, don’t ask me what, but the angel was beautiful and powerful and saved my life from them.”

Sara nods slowly. “That’s cool.”

“I’m not quite done,” the woman insists. “You see, at first, she pretended to be one of the other nurses, so I got a chance to meet her. That was the second way she saved my life, by helping me realize some things about myself. Point being, her name was Sara, like you.”

Judy sends an apologetic smile to Sara. “There’s no stopping her.”

Sara smiles back, but the memory of the hoarse voice of the old woman is starting to come together. “Well, I’m flattered, I like my name too,” she says. “And what’s your name?”

The tight smile of the younger woman smooths out in gratitude. “Lindsey,” the old woman answers, as they finally reach the shower section.

“Thanks for showing us the way,” her daughter says, and after making the employee-appropriate farewells, Sara retreats a couple aisles away to watch the two meander down the row of showerheads. It takes her a moment or two to do the math – twenty in the fifties means ninety now, so that matches up.

The insanity of the whole thing tugs at her for a moment, but she brushes it off. At the least, it’s nice to know Lindsey Carlisle remembers her fondly, and got a happy life after all.

At the end of the aisle, her manager appears. “You better have finished with those towels, Freckles,” he scowls. “If you’re over here slacking off…”

“I,” she interrupts jauntily, “Was helping customers.” He narrows his eyes at her suspiciously, and she smirks back. “You can ask them if you want. Judy and Lindsey, in the shower section. I was really nice to them, so they’ll definitely remember me.”


	9. IX - Dad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin doesn't know about the choices Sara has been faced with over the past year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm actually getting to the place where I have to start writing to stay ahead of posting! It should be fine, though. That said, I'm a little worried this chapter isn't very good... so yeah, be aware. I hope it's enjoyable still.

She had very pointedly taken the call in front of Carl, picking it up and saying, “Hi Dad! What’s up?”

“Hey sweetie,” he had said, voice made hollow by the phone. “So, um, there’s a work thing tonight. A potluck thing at the station. We’re supposed to bring our families.”

“You want me to come?” Carl had glared from across the breakroom, and Sara had grinned back at him, unconcerned.

“If you want.” He shuffled around on the other end. “I know its late notice, and you don’t have to. But all the other guys, they bring their wives, and in the past, since I, ya know, couldn’t bring a wife, Laurel went with me.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” She had waited out his pause, and their breaths passing in and out of sync over the phone. “No pressure, Sara. It would just be nice to see you.”

She had donned a smile, even though he couldn’t see it. “Well, Dad, I would go to hell and back for you, but a couple hours of small talk is asking a lot.” He chuckled, and her smile slipped a little. “I’ll be there.”

So hours later, Sara waits outside the police department. She feels very short - neither tennis shoes nor boots had seemed appropriate, so she’s wearing a cheap pair of flats she bought on her way here. After a few minutes of avoiding eye contact with officers on their way in, she pulls out her phone.

_There’s this thing called the Spear of Destiny_ , she types in a notes app, _it changes reality_. That feels solid, but nothing seems to come next, and she goes down several lines and starts somewhere else. _I had to make a hard choice last year_ , she attempts, then holds down the backspace button a little too long and takes a minute to fix everything and get back to where she was. _There’s something I did that seemed like the right decision at the time and now I don’t know_ , she tries again, and spends several seconds to fix her spelling, delaying. _I wanted to apologize because_ , she manages, before leaving that there and starting yet another paragraph. _I could have saved La_

The sound of approaching footsteps makes itself known, and she glances up and immediately turns off her phone.

“Sorry I’m late,” her dad sighs, approaching. “Had to pick some food up.” Sure enough, he’s brandishing a container of store-bought cookies. “Thanks for coming, by the way. I know this is the most boring thing you could possibly be doing with your night.”

Sara offers a chuckle, falling into step beside him as they head in. “I feel like you’re more annoyed than I am,” she says.

He gives a strange half-wave half-salute to a woman getting out her car. “Oh, probably. These are always so awkward, and they’re even worse since I got promoted.” He pauses, then adds, “That’s why I always had Laurel come. She was much better than me at making conversation.”

Sara’s smile is small and tight as her dad holds the door open. “I’ll try my best,” she offers.

Groups of people are scattered across the lobby, creating a low buzz of conversation and laughter. Along one wall is a row of folding tables, purple plastic tablecloths under a motley collection of dishes. They drop off the cookies, and drift down the tables, filling plates. “Honey, do you smell that?” he asks, handing her a fork. “Like soap?”

She rolls her eyes angrily. “Some little kid through a whole container of conditioner at me. I didn’t have time to shower.”

She glares at his stifled laugh. “Sorry,” he chuckles. “It’s not funny at all. Not funny.”

They post up near the staircase, letting the carousel of acquaintances filter past. Many of them ask curiously after her, and she smiles and makes the same joke every time: “I’m the missing Lance.”

“Oh, yeah!” one of them says. He’s over-jovial and a little overweight. “I heard you were alive, was really happy for you, Quentin. But I haven’t seen you around till now.”

“I’ve been traveling,” Sara replies. Out of the corner of her eye, her father’s boredom is ill-disguised.

“Oh, I wish I had more time for that!” the officer responds. “Where’d you visit?”

Sara blinks. “Um, lots of places.” She discards Camelot and the moon as abnormal. “Got a chance to see, uh, the Somme.”

“Interesting,” he replies automatically, then returns to talking about himself. “Me, I love Hawaii. Go every time I have the chance. You ever been?”

“Once when I was little.” Oliver’s family had taken her and Laurel, when she was in fifth grade and Laurel in seventh, when the three of them were friends and playmates and nothing else. She had gotten the most horrible sunburn. “It’s been a very long time.”

The man is happily, stubbornly certain of his conversation prowess, and it takes Sara a bit to send him on his way. Once he latches onto the next coworker, she turns to her dad. “I’m going to go get a drink,” she says. “You want something?”

He blinks. “Huh? No, I got my water here. I’m good.” Sara grimaces apologetically, he forgives her with a small shake of his head, and she heads off. She makes her way over to the coolers, intentionally slow, needing the break. Without her father, she’s just another face, and she wanders through the crowd, eavesdropping and avoiding eye contact. By the time she starts to head back over, the tightness in her throat has subsided and she feels ready to face another hour of inane questions. Ducking past an officer in imminent danger of spilling her drink, she reemerges from the crowd, and the woman her father is talking to turns to face her and beams. “Sara,” she greets, and opens her arms for a hug.

In the few moments she has before obligation pulls her in, she searches the woman’s face. “Liz,” she realizes, finally seeing past the graying hair to her father’s partner from so long ago. She reaches an arm awkwardly up, and Liz embraces her quickly but tightly.

“Haven’t seen you in forever!” Sara glances at her father as Liz goes on. “Not since, oh, remember that barbeque you hosted, Quentin? Like ten years ago now!”

“Yeah, I remember,” he replies, catching her eye with a strange expression. She flips through several memories in the time shortly before everything went to hell, vaguely lights on one of his birthday parties that she probably attended high. More memorable was how Laurel had stayed glued to her side, alternating between furiously disapproving glances and an impenetrable conversational shield between Sara and the rest of the guests.

Sara does not allow herself to be phased. With the scraps of patience she'd gathered during her escape across the room, she comes around Liz to stand beside her father, a little in front, and smiles as blandly as she can. “Yeah, the good old times, huh?” She lifts her beer cheerily. “It’s good to see you again, how’ve you been?”

She gets lucky, though. Before Liz really hits her stride, another man drifts over and recruits her for a fusball game on the other side of the room. Sara smiles apologetically and turns down an invitation to participate.

Before she leaves, Liz hugs her again – this time, Sara finds an even better balance between discouraging but polite – and smiles warmly at the two of them. “Makes me happy to see you keeping you dad company, Little Lance,” she says, face turning darker. “Should have at least one of his daughters.”

When she’s gone, Sara takes a long drink of her beer. She closes her eyes briefly, then turns to her dad.

He meets her with a guilty frown. “I’m sorry about that, Sara.”

She shakes her head. “She’s well intentioned. There’s nothing to apologize for.”

“Yeah.” He gazes at her, idly scraping his thumb along his water bottle. “You’ve changed more than anyone gives you credit for. Even me.”

Sara breaks eye contact and gazes out across the room. Impossibly, there’s no one heading over to talk with them. A shout rises from the other side of the room – Liz has scored.

Her dad is still talking, a little nervously but with conviction. “I don’t mean it badly, honey, but even from last year you’ve changed. I don’t know much of what you time travelers do, but I’d love to know what happened that made you…” Sara looks back over at him, and he startles a little. “I dunno, Sara. More steady?”

It’s been itching down her back all night, but it occurs to her plainly that if she’s actually planning on giving her dad the apology she owes him, there will never be a better time than this. If she doesn’t do it now, she might as well admit to herself she never will.

“Well, I became Captain,” she begins.

Confusion flits across his face. “I thought that Rip character was in charge.”

“He was. He got…” she struggles. “Lost. Sort of. I had to take over. And even once we found him again, I stayed in charge. It’s my team now.” He looks impressed, and it makes her feel much worse. “At least it was,” she adds, and gathers her thoughts so she can get this over with. The words are there, sharp but unforgettable, and she only must push herself to start. "There's something I need to tell you."

His brow draws, slightly, and she sees it but doesn't, trapped now by her own momentum.

“Okay, so, we were fighting all these villains who had failed. A speedster, Malcolm Merlyn, and, uh. Damien Darhk.” He opens his mouth to speak, but she barrels ahead. “From the past. Before he died, before he killed her.” A pang shoots through her fingers and she loosens them around her drink. “So if I killed him, I could have saved her.”

He interrupts her by putting his hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Sara. You can’t blame yourself,” he insists. His sincerity is cuttingly clear. She blinks hard and brushes his arm off her shoulder.

“It’s not that I couldn’t,” she corrects, “It’s that I didn’t. I had the chance, but it would have had consequences for the timeline. We’re not supposed to change history, but I could have broken the rules to save her.” She doesn’t dare look up at his face, but she can hear his breath, the sudden raggedness of it, and she can hear what he doesn’t say. She inhales and presses on. “The villains, they wanted the Spear of Destiny, it can change reality. We wanted to destroy it, but we couldn’t, and so to stop them, I had to use it.”

It comes back to her, the smell of Laurel’s apartment and the movie on the TV and the taste of the wine in her glass. “I could have changed anything. Anything I wanted.” He’s still silent, and she looks up, urgently, almost desperate for him to understand. “I could have brought her back, and I decided the timeline was more important.” She can’t read his face, but there’s no stopping now. She concludes, “I made a decision for myself not to save her. But I shouldn’t have made that decision for you. I took her away from you again.”

“Quentin!”

Liz has emerged again. She’s grinning. “No one wants to play against me anymore. Care for some fusball?”

Sara studies the ground, the beige carpet and the crumbs waiting to be vacuumed. She hears her dad say, “Not now, Liz,” and his voice is tense and strangled. She hears Liz’s apology, and her voice is regretful as she quickly retreats.

“Hey,” her dad says. She looks up, biting her lip. His eyes are watery but steady. “What do you say we get out of here? I think I’ve stayed as long as I need to.”

She follows him to the door. He calls out farewells where necessary, and she lets him deal with that, trailing quietly behind him. Then they are out the door, and the chill night air rushes in. After the sleepy, stifling warmth of too many bodies in the station, the cold is shocking, and Sara lets it steady her.

Quentin leads her onto the lawn in front and stops in the dark stripe between two bars of lights thrown out of the windows. “Sara,” he says.  
She looks up into her father’s face, the grass itches her exposed ankles, and it makes her feel very young.

“So I don’t know about any of this Spear of Destiny timeline nonsense,” he begins. He doesn’t laugh at his own joke. “But I know you. I know that you’ve always been a strong, kind person, and that all the challenges you’ve overcome recently have only made you stronger. I know that you’re a hero.” He presses his lips together and gathers himself. “So if bringing Laurel back was the wrong call, if it hurt people, then that’s that, honey. I trust your judgement.”

Sara brings her arms in to her chest and holds her elbows, helpless before his faith. “I’m sorry, Dad,” she says again.

He reaches out, and she stumbles a half step forward into his embrace. “Sara,” he sighs, muffled by her shoulder. “What a woman you’ve become.”


	10. X - Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3x01, Aruba-Con:
> 
> "Wait, I've seen this play before. Leave the merchandise unattended, draw the target out -"
> 
> "League of Assassins strategy?"
> 
> "No, it's Sink Shower & Stuff. We use it to catch shoplift... it's a trap!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi so remember last chapter (I know you don't, that's okay) when I was like "I have mixed feelings about this one"? Yeah, this one is way worse. So I apologize in advance.
> 
> BUT! I am going to hold onto feeling proud of being almost done with my first ever multi-chapter fic! So yeah. Hope you enjoy.

Carl paces back and forth in front of the less-than-neat line of his shift workers. His shoes squeak menacingly on the linoleum.

“We’ve been having issues,” he announces, “with shoplifters.”

His expression is deadly serious, hands clasped tightly behind his back, and Sara coughs into her shirt to avoid snickering. Wise to her ways, he gives her a furious glare.

“Now, it’s not any one culprit, but a general atmosphere of lawlessness,” he continues, “They feel safe. We need to change that.” His eyes flit over the row of yawning employees, to Sara, who is at least engaged, because she finds it hilarious. “We need to catch one of them.”

“Make an example,” Sara offers, forcefully keeping the corners of her mouth turned down. He is not at all fooled but runs with it anyway out of necessity.

“Exactly. So we’re going to use an old Sink Shower & Stuff trick: leave the merchandise unattended to catch shoplifters. Today, everyone stay away from the section with the sample hand lotions. I will watch from a distance. When someone pockets something, thinking they’re safe, I’ll catch them. And our problem will be solved.”

“Yes, sir!” Sara says, saluting. His mouth is drawn tight in annoyance, but he doesn’t have time to fire her before the store opens, so he gives up and stalks off to stake out the lotions.

And sure enough, he spends the next several hours drifting creepily along the aisles adjacent to the display in question. It’s the best day Sara’s had in a while, always with something to amuse her. She’s entertained for a full hour by the expression of soul-rending conflict on his face when a customer asks him for help and drags him away from his post. And if at least two teenagers come through her checkout line with hands tucked too carefully into large pockets, well. She’s not going to spoil Carl’s fun by saying anything.

It takes until early afternoon before he actually notices what she’s been seeing all day, and the note of triumph in his voice makes it carry further than it should. “Turn out your pockets,” he demands, and the edge of girl Sara can see around a shelf goes stiff with panic.

“Uh, I don’t, no, I don’t want to,” she stammers.

Carl approaches with glee. Menacingly, he repeats, “Turn out your pockets.”

There’s a pause. Then she turns and runs.

Confused chatter arises in the store as she rounds the edge of the aisle and sprints for the door. Carl stands flabbergasted, and Sara considers for a moment. She picks up the next item she’s about to ring up, a replacement part of a toilet that has decent heft and close enough to the right shape. “Stop!” Carl shouts fruitlessly, as the girl enters the checkout area of the store and approaches the exit beyond it, and Sara makes her mind up.

“Sorry, I’ll get you another one,” she directs at the nervous woman whose purchase it is. She draws it back over her shoulder, lets her fingers slip to the right place on the irregular shape, and smoothly sends it on its way. It spins neatly through the air, intersects with the shoplifter’s path, and whizzes in front of her legs. She jerks back, overbalances, then flat-out trips, sprawling on the floor and sending sampler bottles of hand sanitizer scattering out of her pocket and across the floor.

Carl arrives puffing behind her a few seconds later. “What the –“ he manages, further eloquence restricted by absolute confusion and how he is still trying to catch his breath. “Why would you –"

Pushing herself into a sitting position on the floor below him, the girl’s lip trembles. Her cheeks are dusted rosy pink with makeup, she’s drowning in an overlarge gray sweatshirt of an impressive brand name, and her eyes well with tears. “I’m sorry,” she sobs, quietly but audibly. “I’m so sorry – please don’t tell my parents.”

Carl has recovered his breath, and seemed ready a moment ago to unleash an impressive condemnation, but in the face of her tears he stalls out. He mouths several inaudible syllables, takes a step or two back, and vacillates in the empty space between the aisles and the checkout.

For the second time in as many minutes, Sara is left the only one prepared to deal with the situation. She vigorously flags down another employee and heads over to the scene that is interrupting everyone in the entire store.

“Jesus, Carl, you’re an idiot,” she mutters, and storms past him to the girl. “Get up,” she demands, and when she’s met with only further lip-trembling, she grabs an elbow and hauls the girl to her feet. “Come on.” With the would-be thief stumbling behind her, and her manager drifting confusedly in her wake, she heads for a back corner of the store, waving cheerily over her shoulder. “Remember,” she calls, “Everything in the tiling section is at discount today!”

A murmur arises, movement resumes, and Sink Shower & Stuff resigns itself to not being able to eavesdrop.

By the time they’ve made it to a little-trafficked back aisle, Carl has recovered himself enough to argue back. “Freckles, get back to your station,” he demands, but it’s weak and he knows it. She just takes up the third point of a little triangular huddle and crosses her arms.

“Kid,” she begins, and snorts at her wide-eyed confusion. “Yes you. What’s your name?”

The girl takes a while to wipe her eyes and sniffle. “Kaelie,” she finally says.

“Great. Kaelie, stop dehydrating yourself, it’s not working. I’ve gotten out of too much trouble with fake tears to be fooled myself.”

From beside her, Carl clears his throat. “Yes, uh. We aren’t fooled,” he repeats, and Sara breaks her stern focus on the teen to give him a dubious sideways glance. He clears his throat again.

After a moment, Kaelie wipes her eyes and settles her hands crossed across her chest, still plausibly defensive but with the beginnings of defiance. “It all fell out of my pocket anyway,” she mutters.

This time, Carl doesn’t need her help. “The bag too,” he puts in, and Sara seconds it with an outstretched hand. She is unmoved by both stuttered beginnings of a denial and the careful way Kaelie at first surrenders what is surely not everything in the bag, but soon enough she’s confident she’s got it all. She sets it all on a shelf and is disappointed that Carl is still too scattered to be offended at lotions next to drain cleaner.

This finished, Kaelie swings her pink bag back behind her hip. “So?” she asks, seeming to have finally left the crocodile tears behind. “Can I go?”

There’s an awkward pause, Carl looks to Sara, and it is the most gratifying thing she’s ever experienced. “Well,” she begins gleefully, “That’s up to the manager.”

For a moment she drinks in his panic, then continues. “But, if I were the manager – which I hope to God I’ll never be – then I would say sure, go. I don’t imagine you’ll steal from this location again after all this, and stopping you from stealing anywhere else isn’t in anybody’s power but yours. So mission as accomplished as it’s going to be.” She straightens her bland uniform shirt with satisfaction and slaps Carl on the shoulder, knocking him forward a step or two. “But I’m going to get back to checkout and leave it up to him.”

“Thanks,” Carl mutters, face soured by embarrassment, and beside him Kaelie’s is twisted by confusion, revealed by a slip of her guarded scowl. That’s gratifying too.

In the moment before taking her first step away there’s a temptation to answer that confusion. Share something from her own past, tie a bow on. Certainly it’s been done for her enough times, and a few lessons even rise to her tongue as parting shots. Martin’s had some gems about hard work – there’s something about responsibility that’s definitely Rip – and even one of the League’s maxims about self-motivation that’s poetic in Arabic and stilted in English.

But her foot lands on the ground and she’s already heading away before she can come up with anything.


	11. Conclusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several scenes from 3x01: Aruba-Con, rewritten through the lens of this fic. Plus one I wrote to close it all out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my original intent in this fic was to keep it completely within the realm of canon. But about halfway through I realized that while I hadn't changed any events, the Sara I had created was different from the Sara we see in the scenes the show does give us to bookend this time they don't fill in. So, I went back and rewrote three scenes from that episode, not changing any dialogue but changing the feeling behind it, putting it in context. And there's one last little one at the end that I rather like.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Last night Sara had added the second post-it note.

Six months was what it took for her to fill the first, all three columns of tally marks. Six months of increasingly ridiculous workouts to keep herself entertained, of more and more difficult internal arguments to convince herself to walk in the door of Sink Shower & Stuff each morning, of less and less detail in her mind’s eye when she pictures the Waverider’s bridge. The note had been comforting, reassuring, but to have added a second had somehow made it more sinister. Carl had worked at Sink Shower & Stuff for five years – as he was over-fond of reminding them all – would she be at ten post-it notes before she was done? More?

And of course Carl was in a horrible mood today as well. She had walked in on him that morning brushing his teeth in the employee bathroom, a sure sign of a short temper for the coming day that they had all come to recognize. He always refused to explain it beyond vaguely referring to it as “a thing at home”, so Sara had unashamedly stolen his phone about three months ago to find out why. Since then, she sometimes considers the way he glares at her, and wonders if he knows about it – sometimes, considering the way he glares, she wonders if he’s grateful she does. Either way, this morning they had made eye contact as he spat in the sink, and in that moment silently agreed with a mutual bitterness to be nasty to each other.

So, par for their course, Sara waits until he’s only a few aisles away before picking up a kitchen knife, spinning it around her finger to adjust to its heft, and sending it streaking across the store to sink an inch or so into a displayed cutting board. He retrieves the knife on his way over in a righteous fury – “This isn’t auditions for American Ninja Warrior, you know,” an oldie but a goodie, and “How many times have I told you not to throw the merchandise?”

She glares back, fingers pressing into a bruise on her palm, and calls up the memory of the knife, the wooden handle cooled from the constant flow of air conditioning.

“Oh, I know that look,” he continues, and he does, but sometimes she wonders just how he would react if he knew what it really meant, if he knew how nonchalantly she could spill his blood, if ever she chose.

“It’s the look of someone who thinks they could have gotten a better job.” He begins to stalk forward, jabbing an accusatory finger in her face. “Well, let me tell you something, Freckles. You’re lucky I even hired someone who had been reported dead, twice.” That one’s newer – originally, he’d steered clear of the topic of her past. It’s only since she’s started throwing knives and other vaguely knife-adjacent pieces of merchandise around him that he’s gotten comfortable going for that one. “Especially in this economy,” he concludes, crossing his arms with satisfaction.

She also wonders if he knows she wouldn’t let anyone else talk to her like this. That his uselessness, his irrelevance, is a gift she has come to depend on.

“What?” he ribs, and she tightens her imaginary grip on her knife. “No thank you?”

Her quads tense and she sees herself dash forward. Carl shrieks as she bends back his fingers, leaps up onto his shoulders, knocks him to the ground. She glares down at him, pinned and helpless, for just a second, before with one swing of the knife she cuts open his neck and sends his blood splashing across the tiled floor.

He waits patiently for her reply while she scratches that itch. It’s an impressively morbid habit, but it has become reassuring in its familiarity. Then, she bares her teeth at him in a joke of a smile. “Thank you,” she grits out.

“That’s better.” He puts his shoulders back with self-satisfaction, and then smiles with his own private brand of sadism as he puts the cherry on top of it all: “Now, get over to Health and Beauty. Someone just spilled a whole mess of conditioner.”

And that’s almost impressive in how cruel it is, so she stalks away in a boiling rage and salutes him with her middle finger on the way off.

-

When her phone rings later – the latest installment in her day of stewing had been turning the ringer back on an hour earlier – she picks it up without looking at who it is. “Yeah?”

The burp tells her all she needs to know, but Rory goes ahead regardless, greeting her, “Boss.”

It’s the first time she’s heard his voice in several months, the first time she’s been called anything other than “Freckles” in a week, and the first time all day she feels anything other than bitterness. “Rory?” she asks, unnecessarily, shocked into hopefulness.

“I got a situation,” he reports, as she checks that she’s alone in the back room. “I think I bumped into one of those mechanisms…?”

He’s delightful, and she is delighted despite herself. “Mechanism?”

“A naggin-ism.”

“Anachronism?” she corrects, and, yes, sure enough, this is what hope feels like. It’s been a while, but thankfully the unfamiliarity does not come with unpleasantness.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Julius Caesar…” and in the pause Sara’s world flips sideways and the room changes color, “Is in Aruba.”

She throws down the towels she’s carrying. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he seconds. “I got him tied up in my _casita_. What do you want me to do?”

What does she want him to do? “Just sit tight and keep him safe,” she tells him, pleasantly surprised to see she still knows how to bluff her way into the right decisions. “If you screw up history the Bureau will be on your ass before you can say –“

An imperious throat-clearing from behind her interrupts her. “Son of a bitch,” she mutters, by way of explanation, and hangs up.

“Are you taking a personal call during peak consumer traffic?”

It’s a familiar game, and one that doesn’t mix well with her new optimism.

“No,” she declares, and in a stroke of genius grabs another kitchen knife from a shelf and tosses it in his direction. It lands a little farther away from him than she intends, a small mercy that his expression of pure horror says he doesn’t appreciate. “’Cause I quit.”

She’s quit before, of course. Last time on the way out she had told a customer that if she spoke to the manager she could get discounts on everything in even aisles. This time, she shows mercy. She knocks stacks of stocked towels down off shelves as she goes, jubilation putting a spring in her step.

-

Her anticipation and nerves bode poorly for her croissant as she waits for Nate to return. It’s in several pieces, the crumbs all over her plate and fingers, by the time her comes to the table with his food. “All right,” he greets, sitting across from her. “What’s so important to make you catch a train out to Central City?”

“Where’s Amaya?” Ray interrupts, heading off her carefully rehearsed explanation.

Nate makes a show of shame. “We kind of broke up.”

Sara gathers herself and manages sincerity. “What?”

Luckily, Nate brushes it off. “So what’s going on?”

“Rory found an Anachronism.”

This time Ray doesn’t get in front of her, and she perfectly hits the conspiratorial tone she’d imagined for herself every time she’d played this out on the way over. She pauses to let it sink in.

“Apparently, Julius Caesar just wound up in Aruba,” Ray continues. “Mick’s got him all tied up.”

Sara hides her annoyance and jumps back in. “Look, this is our chance to get the Time Bureau to deal us back in.” If they’re really going back, she’ll get used to being interrupted constantly soon enough. “If we pull this off, Rip might give us our old ship back.”

From out of the corner of her eye, the way Ray’s eyebrows twitch warns her just a second before he comments, “Wow, I had no idea you were so unhappy with your new life.”

It’s not quite enough of a warning.

She desperately reaches for scorn and falls far short, giving a half-hearted scoff. “Are you kidding me?” she laughs around the tight feeling in her throat. “I’m, uh. I’m loving it. I’m doing really good work.” She shoves one of the massacres pastry pieces in her mouth, not tasting it.

Nate stares levelly back at her, not fooled, but then again only an idiot would be. “It says you work at Sink Shower & Stuff.”

“Yeah, well,” and she chews energetically for a terrifying moment. “Even vigilantes have to pay their bills.” Oh, great, and now she’s lying. “What are you guys so content with, huh? What are you doing?”

She lifts her cup to her mouth as they make their own excuses, watching her breath send ripples across the dark surface as she forces her heartrate to relax. Once she can bring herself to take a sip, she does, then sets it down again and checks back in with her teammates. Ray is winding up his own disappointed denial, and she gives it a second.

Then, “Let’s go.”

“Thank God,” Nate mutters, they follow her out.

-

It takes all of fifteen minutes to pack up her apartment. Clothes, a few toiletries, important documents, in a bag. Food from the fridge, in the trash. Picture, personal keepsakes, various weapons, in the bag. The rest can be left behind as a gift to whoever rents the apartment next.

As she’s doing her due diligence, a paperclipped sheaf of documents slides into the front of the drawer she’s just yanked open. She flips through, snorts, and unceremoniously tosses it in the trash. She doesn’t know what had possessed her to make a second copy for herself of her resume for the security company, but in it goes with all the rest.

Finished, she pauses in the middle of her kitchen, considering. Felicity and Oliver had gotten a text – they knew how these things went. Her dad, a full phone call, but he’d been understanding as well, and signed off with a “good luck, Captain” that had made her breath catch in joy. Her landlord, she texts now, her manager at Verdant, and…

The idea occurs to her with a flash of unholy glee, and she can’t not. One last insult, one last poke, the last word in a months-long argument. She can mail it to him – no, not creepy enough, she can’t have found out where his apartment was for nothing. She can slip it under his window, even sneak in and leave it on his desk, it’s not like she has any respect for his privacy. It’s perfect.

She picks gingerly through the trash and pulls out the resume. Most of it goes right back in a second later, but she’s left with the picture: the President, a collection of masked heroes, and the White Canary. She grabs a pen, circles her face, then flips it over. _Hello from your favorite employee_ , she begins.

For a moment, that’s all she’s got. She pauses and the blank space grows daunting.

As much as she’d like to believe this is just her parting shot in their ongoing feud, Sara knows that can’t quite be true. Their entire relationship, strange as it was, was inseparable from their situation: both bitter, bored, looking for any place to turn anger that wasn’t at themselves. Bringing the Canary into this, she can’t deny, is way out of line. It’s different, and it changes things permanently.

But things are changing – and about damn time. So she sets her doubts aside and writes.

_“The face of someone who thinks they could have gotten a better job,” you said this morning._

_I couldn’t before. But now I’m back to doing what I’m supposed to be doing, in the place I’m supposed to be. Long story short, I won’t be back tomorrow._

_Thanks for a shitty six months. I hope you can move out someday._

_Hate you too!_

_Sara Lance_

_White Canary and former Sink Shower & Stuff employee_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there you go. I'm done.
> 
> I have some mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I think a lot of the chapters don't work very well with each other, some of them are boring and others are confusing. And this definitely vanished into the internet-void. That said, I'm also very proud. When I first created an account on this site I promised to only publish one-shots, because I thought I would inevitably abandon anything longer - and I am glad to have proved myself wrong. In the end, it is what it is, and if anyone's actually read this far, it must be because they rather liked it, so that mission is accomplished.
> 
> If you did read it, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed it. I've written several other fics for Legends of Tomorrow that you can go read if you want. But even if not, I appreciate you having read this one. :)


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